Nobody was out Friday night when we went to see “Stop Making Sense” on the screen; the streets of Manhattan and Brooklyn at 10 pm were rather lightly attended, possibly because everyone was recovering from a mid-week Halloween/Day of the Dead blast of drunkenness, revelry, laughter, and tears. Sometimes, even New York turns into a series of bedroom communities standing vertically.
The New York City Marathon is here today, with about 50,000 runners sprinting from Staten Island to Central Park, traversing neighborhoods, bridges, boroughs, and millions of spectators. It is two hours for the head of the pack – although it lasts all day, with some people still running/walking/rolling through the street when the sun sets. And, of course, it really lasts your entire life if you let yourself become engulfed by the human spectacle of it, which we often have and still sometimes do.
The world is still tense and angry and nervous and mournful about the events in the Middle East as we all feel like we have reached a never-before-seen turning point that is changing the world’s perception of that region and our roles in it. New York is showing signs of this stress as well.
Here is our weekly interview with the street: this week featuring City Kitty, Homesick, Modomatic, Eye Sticker, Michael Alan, Jenna Morello, OSK, Mue Bon, Keoni VGN, Salto, BH, BAKA, and Swed Oner.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week! A great week, minus the loss of Queens-born singer Tony Bennett Friday at 96, the sweeping of new immigrants out from under the BQE without regard for their few belongings and papers, and our general awareness of increased poverty on the streets, the introduction of the CBDC FedNow program with no fanfare in the press, and the gruesome news of the alleged serial killer suspect Rex Heuermann. On the other hand, we had some bright sunny days with lower humidity that pushed New Yorkers out in the streets and our parks to play games and read books and sashay in short shorts and strike up conversations with one another.
In street art and graffiti news, we appear to have entered an era of low-brow nouveau naive hand styling that has taken over characters and letters. Perhaps it is an attraction to the guileless or a need for clarity amidst the clutter – or that Gen Z doesn’t buy the bulls**t. Whatever it is, our art in the streets has a childlike quality that charms without being charming. So, drop the pretense, Pasqual. We all somehow know we are living in the eye of the hurricane so reach out and re-connect. And our street art is dazzling, entertaining, and has a sense of humor forged through sheer determination.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Faile, Chris RWK, Smells, Captain Eyeliner, JJ Veronis, Homesick, Neckface, Panic, Timothy Goodman, OH!, Aidz, Toe Flop, Wizard Skull, Emilio Florentine, Jakee, Tiny Hands Big Heart, RH Doaz, TobBob, Lucky Bubby, She Posse, Eww Gross Ok Fine, Carlton, Skiti, Five Gold Stars, Ekem 132, Rah Artz, 3Modes, Mdot Season, Luce Bokes, Words on the Street, Okina Cosmo, Alex Itin, and TomBob NYC.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week! And how beautiful this city is, even when the heat is on. The amount of talent on our streets is so overwhelming, thank you New York.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Homesick, Mort Art, Optimo NYC, Savior El Mundo, Neckface, Lungebox, DEK2DX, Hektad, Paolo Tolentino, Jappy Agoncillo, SMURFO, Mike King, Mat Lakas, Lasak Art, Snith Node, Big808, Talia Lempert, Individual Activist.
The 66th Annual Puerto Rican Parade will loudly, buoyantly, exuberantly traverse and sway along the iconic 5th Avenue in Manhattan today. Subsequently, numerous Brooklyn neighborhoods will burst into a party with lively street festivities and impromptu fiestas adorning sidewalks, sitting on stoops, and hanging out on window ledges. A collective joy and relief are in our hearts across the city this weekend, stemming from the restoration of clear air in the city; after a disheartening episode of a Dystopian Orange haze that tainted our skies for days this week.
Forest fires in Canada had blown smoke down the Hudson River to surprise everyone, and flummox many. The consequences forced people to illuminate their homes during daylight hours and drive their car with headlights on. This extraordinary event posed a threat to both the well-being and livelihoods of countless individuals, with people working outside at great danger. However, for those who turned to our local National Public Radio (NPR) station for insight, rather than talking about construction workers, municipal employees, or street food vendors, their primary concerns were remote work arrangements, ordering from Doordash, and worrying about the smoke’s effect on dogs during their daily walks. The poor and working class are routinely erased from public discourse, which is why unmediated street art often does the work.
Currently, the cityscape is adorned with captivating street art and mesmerizing murals, offering a wide array of entertainment, education, and aesthetic gratification. We hope you take pleasure in exploring photographer Jaime Rojo’s compilation.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Maya Hayuk, Below Key, Little Ricky, Mint & Serf, Billy Barnacles, Homesick, David Puck, Panic, IMK, Aidz, Robert Vargas, Salo Panto. Artistcjg89, Herman, Gabe, Tank, FLWR, and Sasha Colby.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week! So much to say, such brief attention spans. Looking around at the chattering masses on the streets of Brooklyn and Manhattan this week, the excitement of beautiful weather and a sense of liberty sends youthful hearts aflutter. The gams! The biceps! The colorful plumage and sartorial flair all wend and weave down the street and subway steps past you, ahead of you, inside you. Also, check out the peonies and lilacs!
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: City Kitty, Praxis VGZ, Little Ricky, The Postman Art, Homesick, Calicho Art, Cramcept, OH!, Kevin Caplicki, Toe Flop, Miki Mu, Tess Parker, Mr. Fou, El Cono, RatchiNYC, and AweOne.
Here’s to New York, which we love more than ever – Especially when yahoos come to our fair city and try to trash us and spread lazy untruths about crime and smear us in a hundred ways. Look, my cousin Harold may pick on his younger sister Jicama because of her braids or her attempt to dance with her dumb friends on TikTok, but if you say an unkind word about her he will smack you right into next week. That’s how we feel about New York.
Oddly inarticulate dumbos like Margerine Blather Green and Mike “Mother” Pence might better stay back in Walmart, or wherever they were born. Do they have schools out there? Or were those burned down when they were burning books? When you are ready to tell the truth about our crime rate and quit dog-whistling about all the Jews and blacks and queers we have here, maybe we’ll give you tickets to see “Wicked”. Right after that you can hit the Olive Garden and the M&Ms store – and then you have to leave.
“In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love,” said Tennyson. You’re welcome. Also, his fancy turns to thoughts of sex. The same applies to young women, of course, but Tennyson was obviously sexist. This also applies to pigeons, two of whom are currently making awkward, chaotic, scuffling, fluttering overtures toward one another and cooing softly on the scaffolding outside my apartment window right now.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: CRKSHNK, Below Key, Degrupo, Homesick, Calicho Art, Habibi, Le Crue, Lasak, Cloudy is Here, Gina Minichino, They It Forward, Channin Fulton, Dragon Fly, Gert Robijns, Jozzy Camacho, Nandos, Mini Mantis Art, and Pablo West.
Boy, that Kevin McCarthy is as popular as an STD in a bordello. After begging and paying off more and more people to vote for him so he could become Speaker of the House, it was well past midnight before he got some serious action – and it took 15 ballots over 4 days to award him into his position finally. A classy bunch too, if the pushing and shoving is any indication. Not to be outdone, our own favorite Brooklyn right-wing corporate progressive homesnack Jeffries sliced and diced his foes with some fancy alphabetics in his speech that somehow looked suddenly like a State of the Union speech via Sesame Street.
“FREEDOM OVER FASCISM. GOVERNING OVER GASLIGHTING. HOPEFULNESS OVER HATRED. INCLUSION OVER ISOLATION. JUSTICE OVER JUDICIAL OVERREACH. KNOWLEDGE OVER KANGAROO COURTS. LIBERTY OVER LIMITATION. MATURITY OVER MAR-A-LAGO. NORMALCY OVER NEGATIVITY.”
Meanwhile the BSA office game on Friday was Kevin McCarthy name-that-tune day – challenging us to find popular songs to describe the ongoing losing of votes: Winners of the contest were “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” by the Rolling Stones, “Big Pimpin”, by Jay Z, “Burning Down the House,” by Talking Heads, “Fool on the Hill,” by the Beatles, and “Please, Please, Please” by James Brown, “If It Ain’t Ruff,” by NWA.
Meanwhile, BSA was starting the year in Jersey City to catch some of the newer street art murals that we haven’t published, and the graffiti was on-point as well.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Nespoon, SETH, MadC, Homesick, Manik, Mack, WASP, Beset, JCMP, and Louie Gasparro.
Leading up to Thanksgiving this Thursday, we can say that we are thankful to you for your support and encouragement. Thanks to the artists for the inspiring ideas and the loosely woven ecosystem that keeps them going – gallerists, festival organizers, brands, museums, curators, and fans. We’re happy to bring you more fresh stuff this week too.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Stikki Peaches, Homesick, Drecks, Rime MSK, Bust Art, Le Crue, Sinclair, Duel1, La Nueva Era, Hugus, and Aine.
One of the hardest weeks of our lives. But we’re still here to give you another posting of new shots of street art and graffiti on the streets. Thank you for your support, and thank God for the creative spirit that keeps us inspired, our cities alive, informed, and in-touch with the common person.
The so-called ‘Red Wave’ (red tsunami, red hurricane, etc.) didn’t materialize in the mid-term elections Tuesday despite the drumbeat on corporate media. On the other hand, the Democratic party can’t be too proud of their “squeaker” win – or their incremental moves to the corporate right for four decades. Nothing to sing and dance about.
In other NYC news, do you ever feel like a slowly boiling frog? NYPD is talking about partnering with Amazon’s Ring network; the New York Times explains that all those 5G network towers going up on the streets around the city are really just upgraded cell phone equipment, the police will begin a “Drone Unit” to fight crime– “said to be equipped with night vision technology,” this article says, they “won’t be weaponized,” and the NYPD digi-dog program from Boston Dynamics has been discontinued for right now and drones patrolling streets soon, right? Also on Friday the New York Federal Reserve announced plans for a new Fed digital dollar – a CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency) and the new UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is all in favor of completely digitized money. Meanwhile, it looks like NYC schools are going to be a lot safer with new initiatives to put biometric screening in them including maybe facial recognition. Nothing to worry about, right?
The city pays tributes to its heroes in different ways, and NYC street art loves Biggie Smalls more than anyone, along with folks like Spike Lee and Jean Michel Basquiat. This week we spotted a few new ones among the bevy of new street art beauties we discovered below.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Jason Naylor, Homesick, Savior El Mundo, King Baby, Mutz, Glare, Banksy Hates Me, Ashley Hodder, Raisa Nosova, Qzar, Spin, INU, Cheatz, Ultraboyz, Humble, Carlos RMK, and Yuzly Mathurin.
As the graffiti and street art high season draws to a close, we remark on the stunning array of new faces on the New York scene this year, as well as a large crop of maturing talents from the last decade or so. The length of the cycle for artists working on the street varies some, but we’ve been around enough to see many of the early 2000s stars fade away or move on to other things. The voice of this new generation is as challenging as ever and perhaps more savvy in many ways. Still, it’s good to see the re-appearance this month of folks like Hera in New York – a talent whose global and studio escapades have made her a revered street artist over about two decades.
Our thanks to all the artists of all persuasions and longevity for giving voice and character to our public spaces.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Queen Andrea, Praxis,CRKSHNK, Lexi Bella, Danielle Mastrion, Homesick, Hera, Panic, Seo, Insane 51, Habibi, Didi, Keops, OSK, AAA, EXR, RJG Rock, L.O.U.R.S., Nohemi, Hazard One, and Emesa.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
